Humanergy Leadership Podcast

Hosted by David Wheatley

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Episodes

242

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

Impactful leadership development. For 25 years, Humanergy has helped leaders cut through the noise and take real action. This podcast delivers straight-talking insights, practical tools, and expert strategies you can actually use—right away. Whether it’s a deep-dive conversation with an experienced coach or a quick, powerful tip from the field, every episode is designed to help you lead with clarity and impact. Practical, proven, and built for real-world leadership.

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60 recent

June 12, 2026Episode 24912 min

Ep 249: What to Say When You Need to Hold Someone Accountable

Managers know when a performance conversation is overdue. What stops them is not knowing what to say, or worrying the conversation will go sideways. In this free workshop, Humanergy coach Jim Marshall shares two practical tools: the WXYZ framework for giving specific, grounded feedback without triggering defensiveness, and Feed Need Seed Weed, a four-part structure for organizing accountability conversations from recognition through correction. If you're sitting on a conversation you've been delaying, this one's for you.Humanergy is a leadership development company that helps leaders work better and make better decisions in real organizations. Learn more at humanergy.com.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

June 5, 2026Episode 24847 min

Ep 248: When You Promote Your Best Employee and It Backfires: The Coaching Table

Three high-performing individual contributors got promoted to lead roles. All three are now miserable. The manager who promoted them is asking what to do. In this episode, Humanergy coaches John Barrett and Quay Eady work through exactly that scenario — why it happens, what the manager can do now, and what organizations consistently get wrong about developing people before they're promoted. The conversation covers a practical tool called FROM/TO for mapping where someone's strengths came from and what success looks like in their new role. Humanergy helps leaders and organizations work through real challenges like this one. Learn more at humanergy.com.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

May 29, 2026Episode 2472 min

Ep 247: "Why" Is Not a Neutral Question

When leaders ask "why," they often get defensiveness instead of dialogue, even when that's not what they intended. In this episode, David Wheatley explores why the word "why" tends to put people on the front foot and shares a simple language shift that changes the whole tone: replacing "why" with "what's causing that?" It's a small swap, but it opens conversations that might otherwise close down. Humanergy is a leadership development firm dedicated to practical, human-centered leadership. Learn more at humanergy.com.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

May 22, 2026Episode 24620 min

Ep 246: How to Respond to Angry Customers on Social Media

Most organizations prepare for system changes with FAQs and talking points. When Honor Credit Union switched its core banking platform overnight, 110,000 members woke up to something unfamiliar, and some of them were not happy about it.Jen Wagner and her social media team responded to nearly a thousand comments over two weeks. Not with scripted replies or copy-paste answers. With real people, talking to members like humans. The result was so striking that Honor's social team became the first-ever recipient of Humanergy's Green Path Award.In this episode of the Humanergy Leadership Podcast, David Wheatley talks with Jen about what actually made it work, months of preparation, a clear response framework, the mindset shift that kept the team energized, and why empathy is a practice, not a personality trait. If your team is heading into any kind of major change, this one's worth your time.Topics covered:How Honor's team prepared for and responded to a major core banking conversionThe three-step response structure that kept communication caring, honest, and directWhat it looks like to hire for empathy and then build systems around itWhy the most frustrating comments were actually the most valuableHumanergy is a leadership development company that helps teams do the hard work of leading well. Visit humanergy.com to learn more.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

May 15, 2026Episode 24518 min

Ep. 245: Delegation That Actually Develops People

Delegation is one of the most talked-about leadership skills, and one of the most poorly executed. In this free workshop session, Humanergy coach Lance Satterthwaite gets into the real reasons leaders avoid delegating or do it badly, and offers concrete ways to change that.He covers four common barriers, it takes time, you love the work, you don't trust it'll get done right, and fear of losing control, along with honest questions to help leaders examine their own patterns. He also walks through Humanergy's authority matrix, a practical tool for defining decision-making levels and tracking how much ownership is actually being transferred over time.The core argument: if you're only using delegation to manage your workload, you're leaving the most important part on the table, the development of your people. This session is for leaders who want both.Find resources and upcoming free workshops at humanergy.com.Find the Authority Matrix here: https://humanergy.com/freebies/Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

May 8, 2026Episode 24439 min

Ep 244: How Do You Get Senior Leaders to Stay Strategic? (First, Change the Question)

C-suite leaders often know their teams should be thinking strategically, and yet under pressure, those same teams keep dropping back to the tactical level. In this episode, David Wheatley, Dr. Rick Eigenbrod, and Dr. Judy Brown unpack why that keeps happening and what to do about it.The conversation starts with a reframe: the question "how do I get them to be strategic?" is itself the problem. It creates a dependency that almost guarantees teams won't take ownership. From there, they explore what actually drives the regression: unclear shared meaning of "strategic," metrics and bonuses that reward tactical behavior, the boss's own anxiety signaling what really matters, and whether team members are developmentally ready for the altitude being asked of them.Listeners will come away with a sharper diagnostic lens and a set of better questions to ask before trying to change anyone else's behavior.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

May 1, 2026Episode 24336 min

Ep 243: Coaching a Leader Stuck Between a Chaotic Boss and a Frustrated Team

In this episode of The Coaching Table on the Humanergy Leadership Podcast, coaches David Wheatley and Lance Satterthwaite work through a real scenario from a leader caught between a reactive C-suite and a frustrated team. Our scenarios are either submitted directly or found in the wild on public forums. The coaches explore what conversations this leader may need to have, how to calibrate expectations using CIMA, and when it's worth asking the harder question about organizational fit. Tools and frameworks mentioned are available at humanergy.com.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

April 24, 2026Episode 24226 min

Ep242: Grit, Power, and Strength: Leadership Lessons from Lisa Davis

Lisa Davis spent four decades as a technology executive, often the only woman in the room. In this conversation with David Wheatley, she shares three of the nine core leadership principles from her new book, The Only Woman in the Room: grit (reframed as conviction), power (as advocacy and influence, not control), and strength (the emotional resilience executive leadership demands). They also discuss why results alone won't advance your career, the importance of male allies, and how to build a support network that sustains you through the hardest moments of leadership. Lisa's book is available now at https://www.daviscoreadvisory.com/.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

April 17, 2026Episode 2419 min

Ep241: Roundabouts and Stop Signs: A Framework for Letting Your Team Move

Most organizational bottlenecks aren't caused by bad people or unclear strategy. They're caused by systems that require everything to stop before anything can move forward.In this episode, David Wheatley draws on the surprisingly rich comparison between four-way stops and roundabouts to examine how leaders can shift from permission-based cultures to flow-based ones. He introduces a yield-based decision framework — a practical model that gives teams the authority to move forward on low-stakes decisions without waiting for a green light, while preserving real checkpoints for high-cost or irreversible ones.If your team feels perpetually stalled, or if you find yourself as the sign-off on things that probably shouldn't require you, this episode offers both a reframe and a concrete place to start.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.

April 10, 2026Episode 24014 min

Ep240: How Leaders Actually Use AI: The Four Choices That Shape Every Decision

AI doesn't make leaders more thoughtful. It amplifies the choices they're already making.In this workshop recording, Mimi from Humanergy walks through the Four Choices framework (destructive, passive, productive, transformative) and applies it directly to how leaders are using AI right now. She covers what passive AI use actually looks like in everyday work, how to tell the difference between productive and transformative leadership choices, and why the real risk isn't the tool itself but the moment you stop thinking for yourself.Real examples included, plus an honest look at Mimi's own passive AI moment.A practical session for any leader who wants to be more intentional about how they work with AI.Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.comJoin the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.